No More Birthday Blues

For a few years of my life (I think between the ages of 17-23) I was often sad just before my birthday….may be not sad but at the same time not exactly excited. I stayed awake the whole night and unconsciously didn’t forgive those who forgot to call or text the whole day.

I also had a habit of counting my losses, reminding myself that I was a year older yet what had I achieved? And I suspect that because I actually expected these negative things to happen they eventually did (like having a boyfriend who forgot my birthday).

Well some years ago I woke up on my birthday and I didn’t give a flip who called me or not…..I simply enjoyed my day and was grateful that I had seen another year. I remember what I did, what I wore and even my hair style; I also remember having a wish list and one of the items on my list was a wristwatch and I ended up getting 2 : )

I don’t know what led to this liberating act; I figure that I had simply matured!

So it’s my birthday again and I had planned that by this age I’d be a top shot communications executive and I’d be married with at least a kid or pregnant and would have travelled to at least 5 continents and had my face on the cover of a magazine or on a building on Times Square, would have walked a runway for Diane Von Furstenberg modeling one of her great wrap dresses or on Forbes list of top so and so to look out for……blah blah blah!  LOL, I dream big right?

Well I guess Someone had other plans! Or I was the one not paying attention, not sure.

 I have another wish list by the way, and since the last time I publicly declared my list I got some of it, I’ve enough faith now to believe I’ll get all of this one;

·       I have been in love with photography all my life but finally got the courage to do something about it and take my training seriously; I got a camera! *Wide smile* However, I want to be ‘in front of the lens’ so I want to model a product (Nail Polish because I have nice hands; Hair Product or Human Hair because I have fantastic hair; Makeup products because I have great facial features that don’t need to be altered just highlighted) I’m allowed some form of self promotion please! Or simply model clothes at a MAJOR Fashion show. Kindly NOTE I will keep ALL items used at any of these jobs.

·       A Professional Makeup Box with wheels that opens up into about a million compartments OR simply a ZUCA Pro Artist Bag

·       Be a part of the Makeup Artist Team for any International Fashion Week (We can start in Lagos, South Africa, London then move on to other places)

·       To be 1 or 2 dress sizes smaller (so you can get any healthy device that would make this happen FAST)

·       Mary J Blige inspired Wardrobe *grin*

·       A holiday (I will let you decide destination, however a certain region in the Middle East knows my name so I can make a quick stop just to say hi)

Remember it is a WISH LIST but you can make a young lady happy! Happy Birthday to me *dancing*

Please forgive my image I’m a ridiculous Joker fan

What is a G to a 5 year old?

I asked my friend Seyi to write something I could upload on the blog today, within minutes he scribbled something and emailed to me. After I read his article which was full of abbreviations (rather lazy of him) I laughed and spent the next few minutes thinking of his ‘message’; it truly amazed me how the mind works and how we learn lessons from seemingly unimportant situations. Enjoy…….

I grew up thinking a ‘G’ was just the alphabet between ‘F and H’, I guess I could never have been more wrong. (I will not bother to define what a ‘G’ is but am sure we know in what context this is used).

My perspective on life’s general issues has always been broad, may be because I’m the middle kid and try to see stuff from my big brother’s angle and from my baby brother’s point of views too (Which I grant you isn’t the best for any growing child; having to consider what everybody thinks)……obviously I turned out to be a ‘people pleaser’.

That aside though at the age of 5, a ‘G’ to me was any one taller than I was and I’m very serious, it was as literal as it gets, if I have to bend my neck backwards to look at you, then you had to be a ‘G’…………….and come to think about it the tallest person I knew then was my Dad : ) so the logic is right.

Well as I matured and got over my height=G mentality, I learnt that D(G)ISCIPLINE is Key to a “G” (need I remind you, the ‘D’ is silent *wink*). Forget about right or wrong or good or bad, trust me that’s not what this is about, most folks who actually excel at whatever it is they do have put in the time and paid the dues.

You can’t expect to drag babe with D’banj, he has been in the game and whether yours is built in, his has been polished over time by repetition and with that comes experience. Might sound frivolous, but he has been disciplined in his pursuit of women and money. You also can’t expect to knock Warren Buffet’s hustle in the capital market….that man eats, drinks and breathes stock and I definitely won’t want to enter the ring with Mohammed Ali in his prime.

Discipline makes you stick to your task; American Navy seals who we often admire in movies always seem to win the war, not necessarily because they are physically stronger than the opposition or possess better arsenal (although those ship and weapons in the movie Battleship no be from here sha) but it goes beyond physical strength to intellect; for years they have mastered the art of reading, sleeping less, quick thinking under pressure, living to survive in seemingly terrible situations etc.

An Olympic gold medalist will probably train every day and not wait for 2 weeks to Olympics; the world’s best instrumentalist will stay awake for hours practicing what lay men call “Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do” before an award winning production or a performance. Discipline is that ‘thing’ that will get you going when you feel like you’re about to drop dead or give up.

For me a classic example of a ‘G’ and how discipline improved his life as a whole is Mr. Iron Mike Tyson; I’m an avid Boxing fan and I hate when people judge Mike based on the 90’s. Yes in the totality of his career he could have done better, but in the 80’s, he was unstoppable and I mean UNSTOPPABLE!

Mike had all the physical attributes to succeed in the world of Boxing and beyond……..but prior to when he met Cus D’ Amato his legendary trainer he was unable to qualify for the US Olympic team of 1984 losing twice to Henry Tillman but this same man cleaned up and unified the Heavy Weight Division after a couple of years with Cus. Guess Cus kept him focused, put him on the right track and basically just never giving Mike the option of saying no. And that was it -we had the shortest and youngest World Heavy Weight Champion; a 20 year old standing at 5 ft 9inches.

Left to me I could write about Mike forever, but I’ll leave you to run stuff through your mind as to how much Cus’ training and discipline changed the 80’s for Mike. Undeniably, Mike Tyson in his Prime was simply a ‘G’.

The Betrayal

The wetness of my bed woke me up before I heard the commotion around me

I put my hand to my eyes more out of confusion than anything else

Then I felt it, my room was wet, dark and cold, something wasn’t right

My hand went from my face to my chest; eyes wide open in fear…..

“My Child! Where is my daughter?”

I quickly jump out of bed and land into a pool of water,

I slip and fall out of shock and the ice coldness

I get back on my feet before I even bother to think of what is happening,

I open my door and more water seems to flow towards me

Where did this come from?

Who did this?

I have to find my child

Now I hear the noise, people are shouting names

Not so bright reflections from Flashlights I see through the window

I shout out my daughter’s name,

I run down my hallway towards her room

I shout again and I still don’t get a response

Her door is ajar and she isn’t there

My fear can’t be real, my raging heartbeat threatening to burst through my ears

My front door is wide open and I run outside

The water seems to be getting higher,

I walk around blindly, shouting my child’s name

There is something terribly wrong

The screams are louder, the fear in the air can be sliced

My neighbors are running, mothers are yelling, children are crying

Some are trying but failing to hold on to some belongings

I see an old man just stand in the corner, looking up into the sky, hands raised

He doesn’t seem to be making any effort to escape like other people

The chaos I see stops me in my tracks; holding on to my gate as I stand chest deep in water

I have never seen this before; I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack…….

 

……….it’s been 4 days and I can’t find my daughter.

I’m sitting on the floor in a makeshift refugee camp for displaced people

“Displaced? Four days ago I had a home, a child and a thriving business and now I’m called a displaced person?”

I still have on my body the T-shirt and wrapper I fell asleep in the night before that dreadful experience

I wandered in the floods looking for my child, no one came to help me, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep and now I’m sure I didn’t breathe

For I was dead, something left me the day I moved through the dirty water that refused to go away looking for my daughter.

 I walked into something, I thought it was just floating clothes so I moved it away with my hand but my finger got hooked and as I tried to remove it I recognized what I had touched- a body, long dead and almost completely decomposed.

I looked up and realized I had wandered into a cemetery, the floods had moved bodies out of their place.

I turned and walked towards another direction, there was no need to scream, no one would hear or help. What difference would expressing disgust make? I had a child to find…….

………The ground had literally shifted beneath us

 

It’s been 13 days, I found my child, I found her body

She has swollen to double her size, she has gone dark and her once flawless skin looks stretched

I sit and stare at her for a long time, fighting anyone who tries to take her away from me

There are no more tears.

I had cleared a path for my child; a perfect journey totally different yet better than the one I’ve had to walk

And now she’ll never get to her destination.

She was all I had, my best friend; wise beyond her years; always seeing through the hard front I put up as her only parent

We saved each other from everything…….apparently not this one

This was beyond the strength I had ‘built’ over the years, I had no control

She has never been afraid of water, even in the bath tub as a baby

The cool breeze that accompanied the closeness of the water to our house,

She always loved to take walks and feel the serenity the water brought

And now it had turned its back on her, taking away the life she didn’t owe it

Within seconds, without warning, a beautiful blessing had become an ugly curse………

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Transient nature of Friendship

“Twenty Friends can’t play together for twenty years”, the first time I heard that saying was about 19 years ago in Primary school, my teacher said it in class and went ahead to explain what he meant. I have never forgotten since…..

Every time I lost a friend- whether we stopped talking, just lost touch or someone died, this statement came to mind. Usually I'm sad when I think of it; I have friends from primary school that I sometimes wish we still talked; those from secondary school- times we spent ‘discovering’ who we truly are; then University days when you believe “we’re mature and we know each other well enough to remain lifelong friends”. The painful reality is that people will always move on……

I’ve never been good at keeping in touch with people, a bad habit I tell myself started out of not really knowing how to miss people. I’ve had friends complain and complain but I'm really trying now to change and I have friends who have accepted me like that. There are some who I felt like ‘our time was over’, conversations became tedious and normally comfortable silences became awkward, others we just didn’t have the same mind on things anymore.

I had a conversation with my sister about how certain friends got annoyed if you didn’t give them information about yourself; A gets angry that I didn’t tell her when I went out of the country on holiday; B said I'm not a true friend for not telling him my sibling got married and C claims I always visit D and not him. But I wonder, does it REALLY matter? How much information am I supposed to spread before you believe I consider you a friend?

In life we move, it’s inevitable you can’t decide you’ll be 21 forever, time will pass and age will increase. And as we move, priorities will change, experiences will make some people better or bitter and because I now live out of town can become an issue. Your best friend will get married and become best friends with her husband so what happens to you? You work hard for your money and then realize you have this friend who just knows how to call you for a loan at strategic times in the month or just always owes your business, how do you maintain such toxic relationship? Or you constantly talk about Steve Jobs and he only talks about Wizkid, Davido and Chris Brown at 29 years old?

I had a group of friends in my NYSC days, it just seemed natural that we consciously made time to spend together however slowly but firmly things changed; some travelled for masters, changed jobs, made new friends or had a new life to chase. It hurt for a long time and I wondered why but really it was just life happening! Think about it, if 5 years after, we still remained at the same spot in our careers, dressed the same way or chased the same things won’t we think there was a curse on our heads?

The end of ANY kind of relationship hurts- even abusive ones because you will have at least one good time you shared, and you’ll wonder why things didn’t remain good.

If a friend doesn’t tell you she travelled or she’s dating a new guy LET IT GO! Someone I consider a friend recently got married and didn’t breathe a word to me, I was shocked and hurt but faced the hard truth that maybe we weren’t really such close friends anymore or he wanted a small ceremony and he could do without me at the wedding. Or a close friend that I was on her bridal train had her baby and I found out months after through a stranger……these things happen and if I got angry what would have happened? Would her baby return into her stomach to be born after she has informed me that she is preggers? Let’s be realistic, it hurts but should we strip naked and stage a protest because of that?

Life already keeps us busy and bad experiences are inevitable, why shorten your life further with avoidable and dramatic issues? I believe you should try to maintain good relationships as long and as well as you can, yes we’ll have some people who will be our friends forever but some others won’t.  Free people who are obviously disrespecting you, taking advantage of you, bullying you or are simply possessed; have fun with the friends you have presently; share information that you comfortably feel can be any other person’s business; give people the benefit of doubt until you see they are unrepentantly evil; don’t hold on to offences its dangerous to your heart and peace of mind. And above all YOU be the good friend you can be; a woman I admire said humans always wait for people to love them, but there is no harm in showing love first.

 

The image is a drawing of my favorite comic by Bill Watterson ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ who are best friends.

Addiction: Saved by the Purple Lipstick

I’ve always wondered how people develop addictions- medication abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, shopping and hoarding and so on, I came close to the answer sometime in 2012 when for a period I insanely craved ‘something’. I use the word ‘something’ because till this minute I don’t know what I wanted, I just needed something different, ‘out of my routine’ that would make me feel better or good or free or numb!

I wanted something to hold on to that didn’t have an anchor so I didn’t have to be committed; I searched for activities that provided temporary comfort because truly there is always a price to pay for a good you desire- and I wasn’t ready to do so.

At various times I’ve had ‘almost’ addictions (some I can’t mention because I’ll have to kill all my readers) but recently I was faced with a truth “I’m addicted to work”; I have to just keep doing something, if I'm not working, I'm thinking about work, if I'm not thinking then I'm dreaming of work when I fall asleep. I constantly have to do something and when I’m not doing something then I'm worried that I’m not doing something and that I’ve become lazy and I’ll never achieve my dreams and I’ll wake up one morning old, grey and a failure because I allowed myself sleep a few more minutes or I even stopped to breathe!

I measure success by what I see in my hands; which isn’t totally bad but not when I forget the good I have and blindly be consumed by what I don’t have yet. And so it happened, a few weeks ago I fell ill and before anyone could say anything I knew it was because I NEVER rest until I'm literally knocked down and that’s exactly what happened to me. I was afraid of what I had done, first I was angry at the amount of time I had to waste trying to get well until I realized if I died my laptop would be returned to my office, my make up would probably be shared amongst my sisters and my clothes would be given out because I'm the round one whose clothes are too big for everyone in my family. Point is, it gave me time to think.

And the hard truth is not all my work exactly brought results; activity didn’t mean productivity and it was painful to realize. Definitely I had learnt things, made less money than I wanted, built capacity, met a few important people that don’t remember me because I'm poor at networking, made the best of friends (that I was slowly losing because I had become anti social) however, I wasn’t satisfied, happy and I still had a lot to learn and a whole lot more that I wanted.

So one day I sit up, consciously relax and get up to take a walk for fresh air and in search of moi moi, yes moi moi because if I didn’t eat it at that exact moment I may have died. As I walked I saw a make up shop I’d been telling myself I’d visit for more than a year now. I enter and decide to make enquiries about certain items I needed. Unfortunately (and fortunately) I met a nice sales guy who after trying to sell me boxes, concealer and eyeshadow finally showed me a creamy purple lipstick.

I’d have to say that the guy is good because I was making enquiries NOT supposed to buy anything but he put the tester on my lips and voila! My eyes suddenly looked brown and MORE beautiful, my skin looked lighter and clearer and my headache didn’t seem so painful- just like that I had been healed by the Purple Lipstick!

I pay for my new purchase, suppressing the guilt until I realized I was genuinely happy! Not only because I just added to my growing lipstick collection but because I did something that made me happy, I didn’t worry that I wasn’t spending time doing hard labour or wasting time or money. This simple act opened my mind to other things I won’t bother sharing but take it from me I’m dealing with my ‘fruitless work addiction’.

Maybe I’ll use another addiction to take me out of my addiction to work; not the senseless type I searched for in 2012 but something fun, decent and doesn’t hurt anyone……like dancing, RESTING when I’m tired or buying more lipsticks!!! LOL and of course eating moi moi too because that one that day was of life!!!

Oh yeah…..Happy Valentine’s Day

In the picture is me being beautiful in THE Purple Lipstick and my good friend (and adopted sister) Ezinne who is lazy to use Make up daily but is an ever ready Face Model when I need one!

What I didn’t plan to Learn

 

A few days ago I wrote a funny article and had plans to post it here; I have a habit of waiting for a while after I write an article because I sometimes feel its incomplete or I could edit better when I'm in a certain mood.

Anyway, the article was incomplete and about lessons of life I learnt from hilarious situations then one day I wake up, check my laptop and realize it’s no more there. I check every folder; either I didn’t save it or it got deleted somehow and I was clueless on what to do, totally devoid of any emotions as I had no one to blame for my carelessness but me.

But this got me wondering, I can actually write the article again but “would it be as funny?” I mean the article was based on actual personal experiences I can recall but, there was a but! Maybe I was just being lazy (a condition I suffer from that I’m currently being treated for) or unsure of my writing.

I recently had a conversation with someone who made no effort to hide his irritation about the condition I mentioned above, the next day I spoke to someone else who was a bit nicer and whose personal road to emancipation opened my eyes to the power of one word- FOCUS.

Learning how to control a wandering (I’d rather use multi talented) mind is one of the hardest things; as I began to doubt re-writing my article I couldn’t help but be true to myself that maybe I wasn’t sure of my intention or the message I needed to pass that’s why it wasn’t coming back to me fully.

We often allow our minds be consumed by many time-bound expectations and then become frustrated when we are standing with our arms empty, forgetting we never really did anything to make them reality.

What we do most of the time is wishful thinking and for some weird reasons expect that they should come through and we deserve it. No one is demanding you narrow your options but rather have pictures, if I had a clear picture of my ‘lessons of life’ article, reproducing it may not have been a task- I could have just gone back to my mental picture and replicated it.

Other times we dabble into so much, with no specific focus and end up with nothing. Check it, even the most successful people who seem to have different business ventures are still focused on one thing that is the binding factor or ties their businesses together.

The first time I was getting a shop with my sister, I literally drew what I wanted on paper, I always referred to it so even when we had to make some changes due to space and furniture positions, I understood what needed to be compromised and what had to stay the same. And for the period I had that facility, not once did I regret or try to rearrange things, it was simply perfect!

Always have a picture of everything you want to achieve or you want to see; I have a picture when I pray so I’ll know when my prayers have been answered or accept to wait if God wants to teach me some lessons so that I won’t wake up after a few months and conclude that God is wicked and doesn’t answer prayers; I try to have a clear picture of what I want to see happen in my business within a period of time (something I had to consciously learn as part of my Laziness Rehab); I try to have a picture of the type of writer I want to be; a picture of what type of wife/mother I want to be; and I even have a picture of how much weight I want to lose.

If we can just focus our thoughts/imaginations/wishes/expectations and make them sketches, then I'm sure we could always go back to the drawing board to eliminate unwanted things, prioritize, get desired results and definitely overcome laziness. I once read that “If you know your WHERE, then you can overcome the HOW”.

‘Writing’ the wrongs

I’ve battled with ‘semi-writers-block’ for almost a month, worrying myself sick of what I needed to write on pencil goddess. What would get people’s attention? What would get them to laugh? What would make them impressed?

I’ve received different opinions about my blog- a mix of good and honest reviews but all putting me under pressure. I realized I had begun to limit myself into a style of writing or storytelling and that wasn’t my original intent for pencil goddess….i simply wanted a place to talk!

Well……the year 2012 is almost over and as is the ‘unconscious culture’ people inevitably take stock of the events of the year and how much has been accomplished in the list written at the beginning of the year.

Honestly, I don’t remember my list, I may have an idea of what I wanted but somewhere along the year (like April) I misplaced it- both mentally and physically. I mean there was just nothing ……..i was officially tired.

Tired of the need to impress; tired of high hopes that were constantly dashed; tired of having a master plan that I never executed; tired of being boxed into time and space of a year- 365 days of being on the road to a place that may have been an illusion all along.

Don’t get it twisted, it’s good to have expectations, it makes a whole lot of sense to plan but the achievements of these plans are on whose terms and timing? How do you control things like age, death, change, maturity? How do you let go of a dream that was supposed to simply remain a dream but you stepped out into reality with something so abstract, it couldn’t fit in? How do you know that somethings are side attractions, sites or sign boards but not the destination- simply part of the journey?

Well it’s December and we have 24 days to 2013 according to the Roman calendar we follow, while the Chinese celebrated New Year some months ago, Muslims celebrated Islamic New Year in November and the Jewish calendar has its own arrangement!

So for me, my New Year starts Now! Or Yesterday or Tomorrow! Someone said your morning is whenever you wake up, I agree. So get up and do what needs to be done, get over the things you should have done, it’s too late to be upset just move on. Buy that dress, get that hair cut, start that class, write that article, forgive who you need to (honestly this is a bit hard so just ignore them till you realize you’re no more angry, LOL), get organized, if you’re failing on your diet (like I am a few times) let it go and continue from where you stopped, if you expected to be engaged and you’re not ……well, pray (I'm sorry don’t have relationship advice) God will answer you. Whatever it is GET OVER IT.

This isn’t an excuse for laziness but really what else can you do but get up when you feel you’re down? Moving forward isn’t even an option, it’s NECESSARY.

In fact re-write your list if you have to, there are no rules and God isn’t wicked. Lol HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!